Writing About Travel Without Writing a Tourist Poem
Travel is the most postcard-y subject in poetry and the most likely to be a brochure. A judge on the three moves that turn a travel poem into a real one, the test that tells you if the poem is about the place or about you, and the one image that always works.
Travel is the most postcard-y subject in poetry, and it is the most likely to be a brochure. Every contest pile has a stack of travel poems that are about the place and the view and the food and the way the place is beautiful, and the brochure is the thing that makes the poem a postcard instead of a poem.
The travel poem that works is not about the place. It is about the person who is in it.
The brochure trap
The brochure poem is the one that tells you what the place looks like. The buildings, the streets, the weather, the local colour. It is accurate and it is flat, because the place is the subject and the subject is the one thing the reader can see for themselves.
A poem about travel should not describe the place. It should describe what the place did to the person who was in it.
The three moves that turn a travel poem into a real one
Move one: put a person in it. The travel poem that works has a person in it, a traveller, a local, a self. The place is the stage; the person is the play. The poem is about the person in the place, not the place itself.
Move two: give the place a job. The place should be doing something, making a sound, holding a memory, changing a view. If the place is just sitting there, it is a backdrop. If it is doing something, it is a subject.
Move three: let the place change you. The best travel poems are the ones where the speaker is different at the end than they were at the beginning, and the place is the thing that changed them. The place is the agent; the poem is the change.
The question that decides
Here is the question I ask when I am judging a travel poem: is this poem about the place, or is it about the person in the place? If the answer is the place, it is a brochure. If the answer is the person, it is a poem.
The brochure poem says 'this is what I saw'. The real travel poem says 'this is what the place did to me'. The difference is the difference between a postcard and a life.
A worked example
Bad: 'The city was beautiful and the food was amazing and the people were friendly.' The place is the subject; the speaker is absent.
Better: 'I learned to say thank you in a language I do not speak, and I have been saying it in every language since.' The place is the agent; the speaker is the person who is changed by it. The poem is about the person who has been changed by the place, not the place itself.
Where it goes wrong
The trap is the poem that is a love letter to the place. The love letter is not a poem; it is a thank-you note. The poem is the thing that the place did to the person who was in it, and the doing is the work.
If you want to see a travel poem that is about the person, the prompts library has a set on arc and the self, and the contest window is open when the draft is ready. The place is the stage. The person is the play.
Keep reading
For the craft side, the imagery module covers the deeper method. The prompts library is the page to read next, and the negative-space module is where the work goes when it is done.
By Writory Editorial, for Writory.
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